Electronic calendars are being used by an increasing number of users to keep track of a wide variety of events, including various types of meetings. Existing electronic calendars can be set up to alert a user at specified times regarding events in their schedule. In addition, some existing systems support group calendaring operations including alerting an entire user group with regard to group events, allowing group members to view other group members schedules, and group scheduling actions that support setting up meetings with group members. In such systems, meeting invitations may be conveyed by electronic mail or through some other method, and allow invitees to accept or decline the invitations. User interface views provided in existing electronic calendars also generally include screens showing day, week and month schedules. For purposes of explanation, a user that sets up and controls parameters associated with a given meeting scheduled through an electronic scheduling system is referred to herein as the “chairperson” for that meeting.
Existing electronic calendar systems allow the chairperson for a meeting to conveniently determine those invitees that have accepted, not responded, or declined a meeting invitation. However, a significant shortcoming of existing systems results from their lack of support for determining how invitees plan to attend a given meeting (i.e. their planned “mode” of attendance). For example, existing systems do not include mechanisms that allow a chairperson to determine which invitees plan to attend by phone and which invitees plan to attend in person. As a result, situations may often arise in which the number of attendees participating by a given mode of attendance (e.g. calling in), exceeds the number of attendees that can be supported by the resources reserved for the meeting (e.g. call in lines). Such situations may result in potentially many invitees from successfully attending the meeting.
For the reasons stated above and others, it would accordingly be desirable to have a new system for electronic calendaring that enables a chairperson to conveniently access information regarding the attendance modes of invitees and to adjust the resources allocated for a given meeting in response to such information.